I Don’t Know

The pain of waiting and the joy of creating

I am currently in a state of waiting. In my work life I am waiting for literary agents to review the latest draft of my novel, “Portia” and I am waiting to see how the seeds I have sown in my audiobook narration career develop. My personal life has its share of waiting as well. I feel stuck on pause.

I don’t like waiting. In a choice between doing all the things and waiting for something I would much rather do ALL THE THINGS. I have prayed many times for patience and while I have received many opportunities to practice patience I have yet to develop it to my satisfaction. 

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I don’t know the outcome of any of these things I am waiting for. They all involve the judgment of others on something I truly care about. They are worth the wait. Whatever the outcome I will have more information, more discovery to work with and use to determine my next steps. All of this is valuable.

However, while I wait I find myself drawn to comparisons between other writers and their publishing journeys and other actors and their career trajectory.

None of this is helpful. I am not another person. I am who I am. I have strengths that others do not and vulnerabilities that others do not. My story is exactly that, mine. So why do I measure myself and more importantly why do I measure myself in a way that leaves me feeling as if I am failing?

It seems a particularly cruel approach to compare myself to the author who had five offers of representation within days of sending out his first submissions or the actors whose stars are riding high as they are showered with adulation and awards. And yet this is the approach my brain takes EVERY SINGLE TIME. It seems to want to find me wanting.

I was going to say I don’t know why this is but I have an inkling that I do. My brain craves certainty. It wants to KNOW an outcome. And so, when a positive outcome is statistically unlikely my brain can compute that it isn’t going to happen and so I can rest uncomfortably in the knowledge that I will be unsuccessful. 

There is a song “But Not For Me” that I used to sing as a teenager, when I first discovered jazz. “A lucky star’s above, but not for me.” Somehow I have taken that into myself and made a groove my certainty craving brain loves to settle into.

Steven Pressfield, writer of “The War of Art”, which lives on my desk, would say this is resistance in action. The larger and more audacious the dream the bigger the shadow cast by resistance, determined to prevent me from creating and exploring. It is a stealer of joy, of play, of life and it stops me from continuing to create until someone else gives me permission or decides I’m good enough.

Or it does, if I let it. Because what if there is something to be grateful for inside the “I don’t know?” Perhaps not knowing is exactly the point. When I walk into my booth or sit down to write I don’t know how the narration will go or what I will write. There is no way to programme myself so that my narration or writing is predictable ahead of time. It is a living act and an act of living, done in the moment, one I am lucky to be alive for.

And that is where life and luck resides. In the moment. In the play. In the rehearsal room. On the page. In the thoughts that dance through my mind uncontrolled when I allow myself to be absorbed in a creative task. 

So the best way to wait is not to wait. I don’t have to live in a held breath. I can instead listen to that quiet voice of hope inviting me to participate in the dance of creation. It doesn’t care what the world thinks but how I feel. And it KNOWS how good I feel when I’m dancing.